Japanese media’s double standards may prove its undoing

There is a reason why young people view traditional media as biased and prefer social media

In recent years the Japanese media has been intensely focused on the scandal surrounding the Unification Church, a religious group founded by the late Sun Myung Moon.

According to a Mainichi Shimbun probe, the sermons of the Korean founder of the Unification Church have revealed that the former Japanese prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, was mentioned 1,330 times over 53 years, with over half of the remarks related to him.

The probe also showed that Moon had targeted Nakasone as a key figure for political maneuvering. Nakasone was a Japanese politician who served as prime minister and president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 1982 to 1987.

The investigation has drawn even more attention to the suspected link between the Unification Church and Japan’s ruling LDP following the assassination of former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in 2022. 

The LDP has previously declared it would break off ties with the religious group, however, so far there has been no investigation into Abe, whose shooter believed he had close ties with the group.

There is another case of fraud that has received far less media attention, despite being even more severe and impacting society in a much more direct and violent manner.

“There seems to be a suspicious uniformity among mainstream media outlets when it comes to which news will be given attention”

This is the case of a fake priest who used a fake non-profit organization (NPO) to defraud public funds and exploit women sexually.

There is also the case of a national-scale donation fraud, where money was found to be diverted to organizations that few knew about.

The difference in media coverage between the Unification Church case and these two cases raise serious questions about the independence and objectivity of Japanese media outlets.

Why is one case given such intense scrutiny, while the other is largely ignored?

This discrepancy in coverage is a clear example of double standards that are hard to comprehend unless we are willing to ponder the possibility that the mainstream media has a vested interest in cherry-picking the political cases it wants to focus on.

Also, there seems to be a suspicious uniformity among mainstream media outlets when it comes to which news will be given attention. If one media doesn’t talk about it then it is guaranteed that no one else will. In Japan, there is no market competition inside the media ecosphere.

And as much as we applaud any effort of just investigation, these things make us skeptical, especially when the media automatically targets only one side of the political spectrum.

We tend to often forget it but the media plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion and informing the public about important issues. By focusing heavily on one case and ignoring another, the media is sending a clear message to those who have other means of information other than legacy media, that their effort in looking for alternative sources of information was worth it.

“The landscape of media consumption has changed dramatically, particularly among younger generations”

Legacy media, including TV and radio, has been a powerful source of information and entertainment for many decades. TV and radio were the primary sources of information for the vast majority of people and their impact on society was immense.

These media outlets were able to shape public opinion and strongly influence decision-making by presenting news and information in a certain way, so much so that opinion pieces in their columns were read by millions.

Japanese who would not have newspaper subscriptions would certainly not miss the morning news during breakfast. Now the landscape of media consumption has changed dramatically, particularly among younger generations.

The advent of social media, especially Twitter, has shifted the way Japanese consume media and access information. Younger generations are turning to online sources for news and entertainment, and their reliance on legacy media has declined significantly.

According to a recent poll, 81 percent of Japanese are social media users, despite the average old age (49.2 years), and an astounding 98 percent access it via a smartphone.

This is due in part to the proliferation of alternative sources of information that give a different read of social and political events while they are unfolding.

And that is the reason why many young people view traditional media as being biased and untrustworthy, and they prefer to get their news and information from sources that they feel are more reliable and unbiased.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.

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